Though I had never heard of Guitar Hero (I), I was fascinated with Guitar Hero II when it came out on the XBox 360. Despite a general personal bias against guitars (I’m a keyboardist), I loved the idea of roleplaying a rockstar without having to play perfectly correct music. So when I found out that Guitar Hero III would be available on PC I decided I had to have it.
Now I’m almost done with Hard songs. I still have to go past “One” and “Raining blood”, and then of course “The devil went down to Georgia”. One would think that I have still quite some time to spend practicing on my Xplorer replica, and then the news: Guitar Hero IV is coming down on Earth for the mortals to enjoy!
But the plot thickened yesterday, when I found out that there will be no episode IV (and no, it won’t be called “A new hope” instead). Activision is going to release two. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be probably just a GHIII reprint with a new tracklist dominated by the Aerosmith, who are reportedly working in collaboration with the developers to deliver us a great rock game. The expected release date should be near according to guitarhero-4.com, who goes as far as talking of June 2008.
Guitar Hero: World Tour is going to be a Rock Band competitor instead. The trailers available on the official Guitar Hero website hint at two multiplayer modes… or rather two “multi-band” modes, the competitive Battle of the Bands and a cooperative mode where up to 8 players can take part divided into 4-members bands. According the the site, the release date is announced for the fall of 2008.
While it’s unquestionable that an episode of a franchise like Guitar Hero can’t live forever (in the end it’s all about learning to play some songs), personally I think Activision is milking it too much. Drums and voice are a great new feature, but the Aerosmith game could have been saved for a future release. Two games in a few months (three in less than a year, if you count GHIII) are too much even for the most hardcore fans, especially if you consider that a drummer hero will have to buy a fake electronic drumset. Coming to think of it, I first played GHII little more than a year ago, and it hadn’t been out for a very long time.
A nice move would be making the drumset a MIDI controller. This way, one could have a game controller and a beginner’s drum kit for “real” music. It’s bad that nobody thinks of adding keyboards to such a virtual band - or maybe it’s actually for the good.
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